Uncategorized

Global Engineering and Sustainability- The growing importance of India and China, Part 5

According to Gladstone the history of industrialization properly understood, is a history built on a great disengagement of the West from the dominance of its core classical traditions, and the birth of a new model of society. It was that new model, conjoining limited government and free inquiry, which had no counterpart outside of Europe that propelled it forward relative to other major civilizations he argues. In Britain this gave rise to modern engineering and a culture of self- regulation and apprenticeship that evolved in keeping with its class-based social structure. Outside Britain the first institutions of engineering education were usually highly academic, set up by national governments and closely associated with the military. Neither regulation nor licensing was deemed necessary to control this academically based European practice of engineering. The German ̳Humboldtian‘ university model combining teaching and research has remained dominant in Europe.

Global Engineering and Sustainability- The growing importance of India and China, Part 4

The period from 1500 to 1700 Gladstone argues was marked by turbulent contention of diverse philosophical and scientific systems, with skeptics, proponents of new natural philosophies, and defenders of revelation and classical authorities across Europe. However by 1750, with more detailed geographic studies of the shape and curvature of the earth confirming Newton‘s claims for an oblate Earth (flattened at the poles and bulging at the equator due to the effect of its own rotation on its axis), the correctness of the new mechanical model of nature became beyond dispute for the intellectual elite.

Gladstone re-contextualizes industrialization through this new view of a mechanical universe, atomistic and driven by persistent natural forces, amenable to analysis by reason, having major repercussions for the political and social order in Europe. The consequence of efforts to overthrow most of what was deeply woven into the fabric of European history, culture, politics, and society were the ̳twin Enlightenments‘ – technological and socio‐political5 of the 18th century. These led to the development and implementation of the idea of society as a community of free individuals holding sovereign rights over a limited state essential for modern science and engineering cultures to survive, flourish, and produce the economic and technological miracles of the last two centuries.

Global Engineering and Sustainability- The growing importance of India and China, Part 3

Industrial Societies

Gladstone4 states that prior to 1700, all major civilizations drew on four basic sources to justify knowledge and authority. These were:

1. Tradition – knowledge that was revered for its age and long use

2. Religion or revelation – knowledge that was based on sacred texts or the sayings of prophets, saints, other spiritual leaders

3. Reason – knowledge that was obtained from logical demonstration, either in arithmetic and geometry or by deductive reasoning from basic premises

4. Repeated observation and experience – empirical knowledge that was confirmed by widely shared and repeated observations and every day experience, such as day follows night, the sun rises in the East, objects fall, heat rises, and various agricultural and manufacturing techniques that were proven in use.

By turning away from the first and second major sources of knowledge and authority – tradition and religion – Gladstone says European thinkers sought new systems of knowledge. These were based mainly on revised and expanded forms of logical reasoning, using new foundational assumptions, or more sophisticated mathematics, or inductive rather than deductive logic; and on new approaches to observation and experience, more reliant on increasingly sophisticated and specialized instruments for making observations as opposed to common‐sense, unaided empiricism.

Global Engineering and Sustainability- The growing importance of India and China, Part 2

Several recent economic reports also suggest that by 2013-15, India will start outpacing China’s stunning annual GDP growth rate of 8.5-9.5%. A number of trends in India lead to this conclusion – its young, increasingly educated labor force, relatively few retired people to care for, its high savings rate, increased infrastructure spending and massive structural reforms the Indian government is continuing to undertake.

In our whitepaper entitled Global Engineering Cultures3 we have made the case that the engineering profession uses regulatory and licensing systems since the late eighteenth century have derived from an economic order dominated by imperial industrial, economic and political roots. At present China and India are restoring the positions they held two centuries ago when China produced approximately 30 percent and India 15 percent of the world‘s wealth. China and India, for the first time since the 18th century, are also set to be the largest contributors to worldwide economic growth.

The litmus test for India and China it can be contended is whether as re-emerging powers they can disengage from the politics of industrial and imperial societies to foster an innovative global engineering culture. In this whitepaper an extensive analysis leads to the conclusion that both India and China having recently increased investment in education and innovation infrastructure are closer to providing global leadership in engineering. We envisage this leadership will create an engineering culture based on innovation, research and development, that it will generate socially, culturally and environmentally sound technology solutions and create a peaceful, diverse and sustainable world.

Global Engineering and Sustainability- The growing importance of India and China, Part 1

Ernst G. Frankel (2005)1 presented the case that after leading the world for 200 years in political, technological, economic, military, and even social terms, America is being challenged. India and China – new emerging economic powers, with advancing technological prowess – he has argued are beginning to challenge America’s leadership. While these countries have been focusing on socio-economic development, their capabilities and potentials are much broader he has contended.

Early this year in his state of the union address2 President Obama has reiterated this saying that America needs ―to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world … as nations like China and India have realized that with some changes of their own, they can compete in this new world…. They have started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science he says. They‘re investing in research and new technologies. Just recently, China became the home to the world‘s largest private solar research facility and the world‘s fastest computer.‖ If global experts are to be believed, India and China will be central hubs for the employment of engineers and other knowledge workers in the coming years.

In a 2008 study James J. Duderstadt has pulled together findings and recommendations of various reports that have been emerging since the 1990s concerning the profession of engineering, technology, innovation and the role played by human and intellectual capital, in changing the nature of engineering practice, research, and education. By drawing heavily from recent studies and informed by the wisdom of several expert panels, the author has concluded that engineering practice in a rapidly and technologically changing world will require an ever-expanding knowledge base shifting the paradigm for engineering research to better link scientific discovery to innovation. Engineers he suggests will need to acquire a much higher level of education, particularly in professional skills such as innovation, entrepreneurship, and global engineering practice. He argues that possession of relevant knowledge, creation of new knowledge, and the capacity to apply this knowledge are now key determinants of the strength of a nation.

Globally, privatization has been releasing telephone, utility and other nationalized companies from state control. Digital technologies such as the internet, audio, video and text-based communications are now available to individual users through their personal computers and hand-held mobile devices. Time and space once stopped replication of monumental structures and the movement of people and knowledge. Monumental integration of spatial and time scales using cyberspace technology within larger and larger systems of great complexity has now blurred spatial and temporal barriers giving rise to Engineering without boundaries. Neither mobility nor accreditation – engineering cultures of a world divided by time and space can withstand the impact of these developments. Consequently globalization and internationalization of engineering – education and practice – are now hot topics in relation to the evolution of this profession.

AnnaLee Saxenian suggests that global labor markets are being transformed through the changing costs of transportation at the same time as digital technologies make long distance exchange of large amounts of information possible in real-time. International migration – historically a one-way process – she states has become a reversible choice. Scientists and engineers from developing countries – once forced to choose between settling abroad and returning home to less attractive professional opportunities now contribute to their home economies while maintaining professional ties in more advanced economies. Some even become “transnational‟ maintaining residences and citizenship, in more than one nation. The same individuals who left their home countries for better lifestyles abroad in the last quarter of the 20th century are reversing brain drain by transforming it into “brain circulation‟ as they return to their home countries to establish business relationships or start new companies. They do this by maintaining their social and professional links to industrialized countries.

For example, in the early 1980s immigrants began to transfer the Silicon Valley model of early-stage high-risk investing to Taiwan and Israel. The returning immigrants brought capital, technical and operating experience, knowledge of new business models, and networks of contacts in the United States to these countries already having the cultural and linguistic know-how needed to operate profitably in these markets. Consequently Israel and Taiwan today boast the largest VC industries outside North America, and both have and support high rates of new firm formation and growth.

Many industrialized countries face ageing populations and slowing natural population increase at present. Further baby-boomers in these countries, the first of who will be turning 65 in 2011, will be retiring in large numbers changing urban demographics in these countries. Consequently these countries are encouraging high immigration levels to fuel economic growth. Their rural-urban fringes are also growing rapidly. There is growing concern about the environmental consequences of these patterns, particularly the dependence on the automobile.

At the same time some developing countries are industrializing rapidly, particularly China and India, increasing the demand for natural resources even as supplies dwindle. Frugal engineering an overarching philosophy that enables a true “clean sheet” approach to product development is emerging from this. An example of this is the new Tata Nano highlighted by Rohit Talwar, Chief Executive of Global Futures and Foresight in London. Frugal engineering recalls an approach common in the early days of U.S. assembly-line manufacturing: Henry Ford‟s Model T that transformed the transportation in the United States. Frugal engineering is addressing billions of consumers at the bottom of the pyramid who are quickly moving out of poverty in China, India, Brazil, and other emerging nations.

The U.S. Department of Energy has estimated that China and India will drive a more than 40% increase in global demand for oil by 2030. In July 2008, Al Gore connected the dots to the energy crises the U.S. faces and drew a picture of non-sustainability. He challenged the U.S. to generate 100% of the electricity it needs using clean, renewable, sustainable sources within 10 years.21 As a result of these changes engineers find themselves addressing sustainability, a critical dimension in engineering in the twenty first century.

Five years ago, according to Charles M. Vest18 President Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology there were two frontiers of engineering, each of which had to do with scale and each of which was associated with increasing complexity. One frontier had to do with larger and larger systems of great complexity and, generally, of great importance to society. This was the world of energy, environment, food, manufacturing, product development, logistics, and communications. This frontier was addressing some of the most daunting challenges facing humanity. Consequently many today believe in the need to develop and place mega-systems engineering at the center of engineering education in the decades ahead.

The other frontier had to do with smaller and smaller spatial scales and faster and faster time scales, the world of so-called bio/nano/info. This was mainly due to the information revolution that resulted from the advent of the personal computer and internet ushering in a period of great change. This frontier melding physical, life, and information sciences, offers stunning, unexplored possibilities, and natural forces of this frontier compel students to work across traditional disciplinary boundaries. As Biologists and neuroscientists have discovered the immense complexity of even the simplest living systems, engineers are becoming indispensable to research in life sciences. The language in the life sciences today is about circuits, networks, and pathways while engineers investigate advanced molecular self-assembly.Out of this world will come products and processes that will drive a new round of entrepreneurship.

As empires rapidly dissolved after 1960 many dominions and colonies had partly or completely adapted the institutional and academic engineering governance models of the colonizers. A large number of engineering associations resulted from this laying the foundation stones for an ‘unofficial Commonwealth’ of professional associations and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs).16 Globally this meant that licensing and regulation of engineers became more prevalent as a means of maintaining engineering standards and protecting public safety, health and welfare.

Just as issues of national mobility of engineers across states had emerged in America at the turn of the twentieth century, issues of international recognition of qualifications started to become significant after 1960. Multi-lateral credential recognition agreements began to be put in place. These were meant to promote mobility of engineers across borders but were largely derived from the traditional model of core industrialized countries as leaders and developing countries as peripheral followers. These international agreements and discussions can now be divided into two components:

 Mobility Forums concerned with assessing professional practice and registration of engineers

A myriad of national and international mutual recognition agreements have evolved since 1989. These include the Washington, Dublin and Sydney accords initiated by ABET, the APEC and ASEAN Registers of Asian Engineers and the FEANI and Bologna Accords to standardize engineering education across Europe. Since the mid nineties focus has shifted to mobility forums concerned with assessing professional practice and registration of engineers across borders.

Significantly different accreditation outcomes have resulted from these. ABET in America has extended accreditation to international levels. It accredits over 3,100 programs at more than 600 institutions in 22 Countries (as of September 2011). CEAB in Canada however has failed to internationalize and currently only accredits 220 engineering programs in 43 schools across Canada. Consequently Engineers migrating to America from other countries face few barriers to licensing or employment while only 1 in 6 of those migrating to Canada get to be licensed or employed as engineers in Canada. Mobility and accreditation now face new challenges.